Why Will The Sun Become A Red Giant?

The Sun is a massive ball of incandescent gas. It is a star and the nearest to Earth. The mass of the Sun is 1,989 times that of Earth. The volume is 1,300,000 times greater than that of Earth. About 30% of its group is hydrogen, 70% helium, and other elements like carbon and iron.

It is a main-sequence star that contains nearly 99.86% of the mass of our planetary System and has a luminosity 1,384 times that of Earth’s. The Sun can also be classified as an intermediate-mass yellow dwarf (spectral class G2V), meaning that it is neither a true giant nor a subgiant—the classification G2 indicates this.

Many people are familiar with the concept of a red giant. It’s what our star, the Sun, will eventually become. But how many people know why it becomes a red giant? It turns out that this is an exciting question in stellar evolution physics, one which astronomers have been pondering for over two centuries.

 It currently is about halfway through its principal sequence lifetime. The Sun is roughly halfway between now and the end of its life, during which it will be 10% brighter than it is today. In four billion years from now, the Sun will have brightened to 2500 times its current brightness, or 250,000 times as bright as it appears today.

When Will the Sun Become A Red Giant?

In roughly 5 billion years, the Sun will run out of hydrogen to fuse into helium, and it will grow into a giant red star. When this happens, the Earth won’t be swallowed up by the Sun. It will probably already be dead from other causes. The Sun is currently in its main sequence phase, it fuses hydrogen into helium in its internal base. However, once all of its hydrogens are used up, it will use its helium atoms to create even heavier elements like carbon. The Sun is estimated to expand to a radius of 1.1 AU and a luminosity of 10 L☉. This change is currently taking place as part of stellar evolution. The Sun is considered to be in the middle age phase (in astronomy, this includes stars between one and ten billion years old). Luminosity increases sharply during this phase because of fusion. The truth is that although the Sun had been shining relatively consistently since its creation roughly 4.6 billion years ago, one day, it will die before our very eyes.

Reason for Becoming a Red Giant

Astronomers have discovered that the Sun is not a stable star. It will run out of hydrogen in its deepest layer in about 5 billion years from now and start to become unstable. As the instability increases, it will swell up to an enormous size, becoming more significant than Earth’s orbit. It will also increase its brightness and heat up to nearly 3 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.7 million degrees Celsius).

Our Sun is growing older every day. It will die in about 5 billion years, as it runs out of hydrogen to burn at its core and ends up collapsing into a white dwarf star. The Sun has already been around for about 4.5 billion years, so that’s not far off! Eventually, the fusion reactions in the core will start to fail, causing the Sun to grow more relaxed and brighter. It will become a red giant star at this stage – much more significant than its present size.

The sun’s death will begin with a red giant phase, when it loses enough mass to blow off its outer atmosphere. It will then shrink into a dense white dwarf star and gradually cool over trillions of years. The red goliath star will shine for about another 7 billion years before becoming a black dwarf, which is predicted to be trillions more years after that. Sun won’t die until 9 trillion trillion trillion years from now — but astronomers have seen stars dying much sooner than that.

FAQ

Could we survive the Sun becoming a red giant?

The Sun is a middle-aged star now, but in 5 billion years or so it will expand into a red giant and swallow Earth and the other inner planets. The stable phase of the Sun will end with its change into a red giant, and its outer layers will expand well beyond their existing limitations. The circumstances on Earth would become inhospitable due to the extreme heat and radiation caused by the expanding Sun. It is widely acknowledged in scientific circles that life as we know it will not survive on Earth when the Sun becomes a red giant, despite the fact that it is difficult to forecast the precise fate of humanity over such long durations. However, before this happens, Earth will become inhospitable due to the Sun’s growing brightness, maybe well before the red giant phase starts. In the end, whether or not we can adapt, occupy other planets, or create cutting-edge technologies for interstellar travel over millions of years will determine whether or not our species survives.

How long does our sun have left?

The Sun is in the middle of its main-sequence phase, during which it is fusing hydrogen and helium in its core, and has been glowing for around 4.6 billion years. According to scientific calculations, the Sun’s present life cycle has about 5 billion years left in it. There will be major changes to the Sun over the next several billion years. Its brilliance will progressively rise, altering the Earth’s environment. The majority of life on Earth will become extinct in 1.1 billion years due to rising solar radiation. The Sun will eventually transition into a red giant phase in roughly 5 billion years, expanding and swallowing Earth and the other inner planets. After then, the Sun will shed its outer layers, revealing a white dwarf, or dense core. These broad stages represent our Sun’s ultimate fate in the far future, while the precise timetable is rather ambiguous.

Will the sun ever become a red dwarf?

No, the Sun won’t turn into a red dwarf. As of right now, the Sun is a yellow dwarf, or G-type main-sequence star. Its core is changing slowly as a result of nuclear fusion, turning hydrogen into helium. The Sun will transition into the red giant phase in around 5 billion years when its hydrogen fuel runs out. It will grow throughout this period, becoming into a red behemoth that will finally lose its outer coats. After then, the Sun’s remnants will collapse to create a dense object the size of Earth called a white dwarf. In contrast, red dwarfs are stars that are significantly smaller and colder than our Sun. Their masses are less than half that of the Sun, which puts them in a completely separate class of stars. The Sun will evolve differently than other stars because of its size and mass; instead of becoming into a red dwarf, it will form a white dwarf.

Will the Sun become a blue giant?

No, the Sun is not going to turn into a blue giant. The Sun will eventually change from its current status as a yellow dwarf, or G-type main-sequence star, to a red giant. When the Sun runs out of hydrogen fuel, it will swell and go into the red giant phase in about 5 billion years. It will shed its outer layers during this phase, eventually leaving behind a white dwarf, which is a dense core. There are stars far more massive than the Sun that go through the process of becoming blue giants. Hot, bright stars in a different spectral class from our Sun are called blue giants. Rather than becoming a blue giant, the Sun will eventually transition into a red giant and then a white dwarf.